Bill banning people born after 2008 from buying tobacco clears UK parliament | Smoking

I wish I could be around to see the news story of the last remaining legal smokers and how they get their smokes. Will it be a competition to be the last surviving legal smoker?

There's always a Key and Peele skit you haven't seen

Eventually there'd be very few, very old dudes who can buy smokes... police following 'em every time they go down to the store...

Nah he will just buy them from the guys in organized crime.

McLovin.

Write it out

Funny, but I don't know that that is any weirder than the past where as a child you could get an adult to buy you a pack by telling them they can "keep the change" on $2.

I barely see a young person smoking a cigarette.. They smoke Vapes or use pouches.

If they’re not old enough to vote yet it’s already illegal for them to smoke.

The parents are still voting on behalf of their children. And most people, when it does not benefit them to do so, would not vote arbitrarily in favor of unfair policies.

I miss the days where you could go into a gas station and get a loose cigarette. Every now and then I get the urge.

That’s fine… when they banned guns in Australia less people had guns. People still had black market guns but ownership dropped by about half

and? they will be even more expensive than they already are. Very few people are going to pay 10 quid for a cigarette.

In the UK less than 5% of people under 20 smoke. Its an old persons habit as is. This is just the final nail in the coffin.

On one hand yes. But on the other - without peer pressure there's absolutely nothing that would make people pick up smoking. It's stinky, it's disgusting it makes you feel sick. It's all around bad until someone gets hooked.  So hopefully the habit will just die off 

No 15 year old kid is going to go to a back alley in order to buy illegal cigarettes, people only start smoking because it’s easy. Also if smoking is bad for you now, just wait until your cigarettes contain asbestos and old newspapers, maybe that will make it a little scarier.

It's come about now because of vaping, and there isn't really a reason to not just switch to vaping if you're already hooked on nicotine. Why would someone insist on going black market with cigarettes if they were never old enough to buy then anyway when they can freely just buy a vape?

A lot of people would rather give up smoking than go for dodgy cigs.

Yes, it's worked so well with marijuana, cocaine and, in America, alcohol during prohibition. It didn't have any unintended consequences like increased profits for organized crime leading to increased lawlessness and people being murdered.

I believe so as well. They're banning tobacco for groups where the demand is very low unlike the adult population where there's high demand

I think it’s more to do with the taxation lost if there’s no tobacco sales. Many countries apply high tax rates to cigarettes and tobacco products.

They'll sit you down out back and make you smoke a whole carton. That'll for sure make you never want to smoke again.

The smoker won't face any penalty, it will be the person who supplied the cigarette, the same way it works now when cigarettes are supplied to under age people.

Yup. As someone who's relapsed multiple times, would have loved it if I couldn't buy a pack because I was 40 and not 41.

I get it. I smoke. But some just like it and I don’t think it should face any sort of ban. If you’re going thru with this, ban cigars as well. Again, I don’t agree with that, but the only difference is that cigs aren’t wrapped in tobacco leaf?

Yep lots of things are better off "legal" yet discouraged: Alcohol, prostitution, abortion; it brings the activity into the light, rather than the darkness. Cigarettes hit a little different, I've used them off and on to basically self medicate mental health issues. It's a much lesser harm than, say, suicide or homicide... I'm fine now. I suppose if you have easy/c**** access to mental health treatments, maybe cigarettes aren't the best move.

I'm middle aged and just picked up smoking cigars about a year ago and I love it.  Granted, that's different than cigarettes because I only have like 1 a day and I don't inhale. But still, you can pick up bad habits later in life, too. I'd be pissed if the government told me I couldn't buy a cigar. 

The addictive part is why it's not outright ban, or that's my guess. You can't just make people stop just by saying so, but you can make it harder to start.

It cuts the opposition by setting an arbitrary date. The people who are born before that date don't care because it doesn't affect them. The people born after that date are too small of a constituency to matter. 

Eh I agree with you, but this seems like a more practical way to do it. A full stop prohibition will just make the people already addicted angry, and will send the black market into overdrive because they won't be able to just quit overnight. Plus it would probably face a lot more backlash because people really don't like being told they're no longer allowed to do the thing they were allowed to do yesterday. This way the market will die out slower on its own since there will be fewer and fewer customers as the older smokers die and there are no new smokers to replace them. Seems like it will be more successful as a permanent change, imo.

If you did it for everyone, established smokers would go to the black market. The idea is to prevent kids getting hooked in the first place. I'm not sure if I support it or not, but I think this way is better than banning it completely for everyone. I smoked for a long time and it's my biggest regret. The vast majority of smokers regret starting, around 75-80%. Stopping access before people start is a good thing IMO, although I have some concerns about government overreach. I support weed being legalised for example, even though I don't like it myself!

This is actually a much better way to do it than outright banning smoking in my opinion. The law makes it so that anyone who has been legally allowed to smoke cigarettes up to this point, and who may therefore have gotten legally addicted to the substance, is not going to be arbitrarily punished and sent into withdrawal or purchase black market cigarettes illegally because they will still be allowed to purchase cigarettes. However, the younger generation will be banned from smoking cigarettes and will never have the chance to legally form an addiction, experiencing all of the health benefits of that.

Wouldnt there be less sales because of law?

People are addicted. Do you understand that? You cannot just cut off an entire generation that was enabled in the first place. People born in 2008 are turning 18 this year, meaning this law will prevent NEW smokers from becoming addicted in the first place. With all due respect its not that hard to understand. You do need to feel a modicum of empathy for those people who made a mistake that was life changing. We all male mistakes after all.

This is pretty out of touch. Someone who is born in 2008 is 18 this year. The idea that they will not have voting rights for decades is insane.

So are you saying the government cannot make laws regarding children because children can’t vote?

Once they get old enough they can elect a gov that can change the law 

I thought it was being applied to all tobacco products not just cigarettes, so no pipe and no cigar.

Wtf is wrong with fish and chips

It will start slowly. The government will first ban indoor fish and chips eating and require that pub goers eat their fish and chips outside. Then it will be alcohol. Same thing. Pub will serve alcohol but you will need to drink it outside as to not bring harm to other pub patrons.

Plenty of recreational drugs are prohibited in the UK. They are in the US for that matter, how is that working out?

It gives the freedom to not die from second hand smoke to the 11,000 people who die from it in the UK each year. I don’t know if this is the proper way to go about it but doing something to limit the impact of the #1 preventable cause of death is a good thing.

Again? Young people use Vapes or mouth pouches, anyway..

I suspect there is a lot of apathy towards, and possibly ignorance of this law. A lot of non-smokers may not even be aware of it because it doesn't affect them. A lot of smokers who are already over 18 now may not be aware of it because it doesn't affect them either. As with a lot of laws, people simply don't notice them unless if directly affects them. If health and wellbeing were the real drivers then why not ban smoking completely, the same goes for alcohol, and probably a whole array of other things that are bad for you. This one has been easier to get through because those directly impacted will never have been able to smoke legally anyway so on paper it should make no difference to them at all.

At the moment the cut off age is 18. This law means that anyone who is already 18 and smokes can continue to do so but that no more 18 year olds can legally start smoking; the theory being they won't know what's being taken away from them because they never had it in the first place.

Really? You don't find the concept of drawing a random line in the sand and saying people can't do something after that line alarming? Forget the smoking. Smoking is bad. We know that. The 2 things you should be taking from this are: 1. That you're happy for the State to decide you can't do something as an adult because you were born after a certain year. Imagine in 2048, when 40 year olds can't buy cigs but 41 year olds can. 2. All the Tax they make from Cigarettes is going to have to come from somewhere else. The State will NEVER halt tax revenue without picking it up from elsewhere. This will be YOU. I will also add, as far as I am aware, this is the first time that a form of discrimination (Age) has been used to set prescedent in Law. Feel free to correct me on this. Not accounting for Child/Adult Laws, which have their own boundries and details. That is to say, that prior to this, Adults, aged 18+ had equal rights across the board.

You guys are more acceptable of the government telling you what vices you can have.

Why should the government prevent adults from doing things like smoke? Should they ban any harmful vice? Alcohol next?

Yh it's mad

for a while maybe, then it becomes the norm. just like how in the US the smoking age went from 18 to 21. sucked for anybody who was 18-20 who suddenly couldn't smoke, but after a few years it blew over.

If they can do it for cigarettes, they can do it for anything.

Lets ban alcohol next, I'm sure that regulating vices is super comfy.

Do alcohol, gambling, sugar, fastfood, big and polluting cars next then.